History of Deluxe Galaga

That is the specs of the final build (V2.6) of Deluxe Galaga, one of the all-time best games for the Amiga – heck one of the best shootemups EVER. It premiered with V1.0 on 10/20/93.

StarBattle

Deluxe Galaga is based on the game StarBattle on the old VIC20. That was one excellent game, that I had a lot of fun with. It’s also some features from the games Galaga and Galaxions. I played Galaga on an arcade machine, but it was so long ago that I have forgotten how it looked like. My version of Galaga (or StarBattle) is a simple (?) shoot’em up game with good game play, but not so much fancy graphics.

Many of today’s game have lots and lots of graphics, but when it comes to game play they really sucks. They have manuals covering hundreds of pages, and you need hours and days to get into the game. What I want from a game is some relaxation for a couple of minutes, and then be able to quit the game and do some more work. And not to mark the calender for when I want to play the 60MB hi-tech game!

– Edgar Vigdal, The Official Deluxe Galaga Documentation

The Basic Concepts and Gameplay

The basic concept of the game is just like most other shootemups of the ‘Galagaish’ persuasion. You pilot your ship back and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting down waves of descending aliens. The more waves you clear, the harder they get. There are ‘boss’ aliens and ‘sub-boss’ aliens as well as the standard fodder aliens.

This is where most ‘Galaga Clones’ leave off. Let’s just see what else Deluxe Galaga has to offer.

Worked into the basic game play are ‘powerups’. Just like on dozens of other games, powerups give your ship a little something extra – from different and more powerful firepower to speedups to even protective ‘armour’ – some even let you capture aliens and make them fight for you. Other items drop from the stars too – like extra lives and more importantly – money to upgrade your ship after 5 waves or so.

The store will allow you to purchase goods such as more powerful weapons (not everything that falls from the sky can be purchased) to extra lives (you can even buy your on-screen brother – who plays simultaneously with you – an extra life).

The last basic part of the game are the ‘in-game’ games (sub-games if you will). These sub-games are ‘breaks from the action’ where you can score points and money (in the cool ‘dodge the rocks’ Meteor Shower game) or even extra lives, points, money, rank markers, extra ‘credits’ (to continue your game), bonus multipliers, and more (in the familiar but timed ‘Concentration-style Memory Game).

In summary, this game has just about every component that a good space shootemup should – and even more so – it has secrets. Ah … the secrets.

What keeps you coming back for MORE

The game keeps you coming back – over and over again. The reasons are pretty clear. The game has so many great elements borrowed from dozens of other games, it is well balanced to play (you don’t get too frustrated or too disgusted while playing it), and best of all – you can take a buddy along for the ride, making it quite possibly one of the best two-player cooperative games ever made.

Also, Edgar has strived to make SURE you don’t get bored too quickly. With 75 levels of action – you aren’t likely to finish it in an afternoon or weekend. There are so many ‘random’ and ‘secret’ elements of the game that you just CAN’T get bored of the game until you learn to exploit and master the game (which I still haven’t done yet).

What makes the game hold my interest are the hidden goodies of the game. The random elements are cool (warp malfunctions, Thief Ships that take your money, Money Ships that explode into thousands of dollars, laser ships that come out and rake you over the coals, power ups that you rarely get to see) but the secrets and strategies are far to spine-tingling to stop playing.

Once you get started, you’ll be hooked. I highly recommend the Stick-It arcade programmable controller to play this game on the PC. Unlike the HotRod, VStick, or your average run of the mill PC controllers, this is one of the few controllers that can actually be programmed to work inside of the Fellow emulator.

If you have a real Amiga, well you probably have already finished this game 🙂 If not, expect a serious treat – smooth, fluid gameplay, extra/cleaner effects and sound, and all the other benefits of running a program on its native platform.